STUMP - ArticlesWhere Stu & MP spout off about everything.tag:stump.marypat.org,2005:38b055a9c25740dc7e39822b07585fe0/articleTextpattern2019-01-21T20:53:58ZAdminsysadmin@marypat.orghttp://stump.marypat.org/meep2019-01-21T20:53:56Z2019-01-21T20:53:56ZA Year of Dickens: Literature for the Massestag:stump.marypat.org,2019-01-13:38b055a9c25740dc7e39822b07585fe0/8a64e8b2a23d26fbea1f6d72ffce8eedWas Modernism Meant to Keep the Working Classes Out?

In the 19th century, more working class readers started partaking in contemporary fiction. Modernist literature, however, was specifically not for them.

The first working-class libraries, which originated in Scotland, concentrated on religious books. Some banned fiction outright; into the early nineteenth century, fiction was considered too avant-garde for the general reader. The popularity of Walter Scott’s Waverley novels started to change that. But, as scholar Jonathan Rose details, “a kind of cultural conservatism” lingered for nearly two centuries among working-class readers in the British Isles.

The “cultural lag” was partly economic: new books and periodicals were expensive.

Dickens helped change that with serial publication.

This helps explain the nineteenth-century mania for Shakespeare; Victorian “Bardolatry” was driven by working class audiences. As Rose writes, however, the “long-term trend in the West [was] away from a common public culture and toward increasingly differentiated and fragmented audiences.”

Except Dickens was for a hyuuuuge audience… just like Harry Potter is.

I think part of the difference is that Dickens really needed to make money.

Meanwhile, by the late nineteenth century, inexpensive reprints of classics by authors such as Swift, Pope, Fielding, Byron, and the Greek philosophers were becoming popular. Many of these were cheap because they were out of copyright. This occurrence, combined with the growth of public education, soon had ordinary folks reading more and more books, including seeking out more contemporary writers. Rose has an interesting theory about how this trend helped to create the literary movement of modernism:

“The intelligentsia was driven to create literary modernism by a profound loathing of ordinary common readers. The intellectuals feared the masses not because they were illiterate but because, by the early twentieth century, they were becoming more literate, thanks to public education, adult education, scholarships, and cheap editions of the great books.”

So yes, a lot of this was snobbery, but it was a snobbery that people who don’t have to make a living can afford.

It is interesting to me, considering which authors really have lasted and will likely continue to last: Chaucer, Shakespeare, Dickens… and they are all quite accessible in that, at their heart, the work is about how human beings actually behave. There’s nothing much obscure about that. To be sure, Chaucer had some obscure pieces, intended for a royal audience, but what most people read now – the Canterbury Tales – is obviously accessible beyond court.

Anyway, the “working classes” being excluded from modernism is just fine. Maybe James Joyce will hobble along for a while, but the movement may end up being forgotten except among scholars. That’s what you get when you try to exclude so many.

Also, such people may preen themselves for knowing so many obscure authors, but they’re going to impress only other people (and young, naive students who are budding snobs) like that.

Look, there’s nothing wrong in enjoying obscure or niche authors.

But it does not necessarily make one better than other people.

THEFAKEVILLAINS OF PICKWICK

So I said I’d be getting to the villains, but first a fakeout:

Alfred Jingle is one of the few notable characters in Pickwick, and the most distinguishing aspect of him is how he talks.

I didn’t give an example in my video, because I’m not a strolling actor (yet), but here’s a direct quote from the text:

“Heads, heads – take care of your heads”, cried the loquacious stranger as they came out under the low archway which in those days formed the entrance to the coachyard. “Terrible place – dangerous work – other day – five children – mother – tall lady, eating sandwiches – forgot the arch – crash – knock – children look round – mother’s head off – sandwich in her hand – no mouth to put it in – head of family off – shocking, shocking. Looking at Whitehall Sir, – fine place – little window – somebody else’s head off there, eh, Sir? – he didn’t keep a sharp look-out either – eh, sir, eh?” (Pickwick Papers Chapter 2)

That’s from when Jingle appears, and his way of speaking is really a glorious creation.

But he seems not to have been as popular as Dickens had hoped, which is why he disappeared fairly rapidly.

This is one of the aspect of serial publication people don’t think about, because the modern version of serial production doesn’t work in the same way re: timing. But Dickens really didn’t submit his manuscripts all that long before publication, and he (and the publishers) were receiving fan mail while the pieces were coming out.

The only relatively similar experience I’ve seen is with MST3K and viewer letters, but that only worked in the early years, because of production and release schedules. The problem with modern serialization is that many episodes are produced ahead of time, and it doesn’t matter if people binge or not, but the point is it doesn’t matter if you send an email or handwritten letter in response, because the entire season is done at once.

That’s not how it worked with Dickens, definitely with the early novels. There’s one character who was a throwaway, that Dickens made a central character because he got such great response to that character. And he was even funnier than Jingle.

But that’s for next week.

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meep2019-01-19T21:13:11Z2019-01-19T21:48:06ZSan Diego City ERS Has No Business Giving Out 13th Checkstag:stump.marypat.org,2019-01-19:38b055a9c25740dc7e39822b07585fe0/25d61835dfb9923028de6543d601febd
It was brought to my attention that there was a record level 13th check given out to San Diego City (as opposed to county) retirees.

The San Diego City Employees’ Retirement System, or SDCERS, reports that more than 9,700 eligible recipients — another record high for the three-decade-old benefit— received a check that averaged $687 per person.

The “13th check” program was launched in 1980, when pension fund investments were doing well and city retirees had struggled through years of inflation. It has become a source of conflict as the city’s pension system faces a $3.1 billion shortfall in promised payments, which remains a taxpayer burden and has led to City Hall budget crises in the past.

Let me start with the required contributions. Brace yourself. This is the “required contribution” – that is, the part that covers the new benefits accrued (i.e. retirement benefits earned due to work done in that fiscal year) plus a portion of the unfunded liability (i.e., paying off a bit of the benefits that were earned years before, but weren’t sufficiently contributed for.)

You ready?

58% of payroll.

Holy shit.

That’s insane.

Even Police & Fire pensions, which tend to have high contribution rates (for a variety of reasons) tend to have rates far below that.

See that yellow line waaaaay below the blue bars? That’s the average ARC as a percentage of payroll, and nationally, it’s about 15% for peer pension groups. 58% is insanely high.

So… why is the ARC so high?

Let’s check that out, shall we?

Here’s the funded ratio trend:

Ah, looks like this plan has been managed to the “80% is good!” standard. It wasn’t over 100% funded in 2001, unlike most public pensions in that year. And given they were in a weak position at the top of the market, is it any wonder that they were only 71% funded for fiscal year 2017?

But here’s another nasty fact: the number of active employees compared to retired beneficiaries is pretty bad —

Retirees outnumber active employees by quite a lot, unlike public plans nationwide. Actives are only 70% of retirees, or, to put it another way, there are 43% more retirees than active employees.

Separately, I will note that the assets are outperforming their peers:

Of course, the 10-year returns are much lower than the assumed returns used in pension valuations… so they’re really probably a lot less funded than 70%, if they used a more realistic discount rate.

But let’s get back to the news piece and see why 13th checks were paid.

ONEYEARRETURNSLEAD TO 13TH CHECKS

Here’s the piece again:

According to Susan Youngflesh, associate general counsel, 13th-check payments are made only when pension fund investments meet certain earnings thresholds compared to agency expenses.

“When there’s sufficient earnings, members get this calculated benefit,” said Jim Baross, president of the City of San Diego Retired Employees Association. “It’s certainly helpful around the holidays. Some years we don’t get it, and that’s a hardship for folks.”

You know what will be a real hardship?

NOTGETTINGYOURFULL 12 CHECKS TO BEGINWITH.

Ahem.

This is a long-term liability. San Diego has actually been a bit more conservative in setting the assumed return on assets than other California plans – I see the FY2017 assumed return was 6.75%.

I don’t know the trigger for those 13th checks, but if you were assuming a 7% return, say, the point was that up and down years would offset.

But say you earn 8% one year… so you give the gains away that year? What about hedging against the down years that will surely come in the future?

It seems to me that if you’re assuming a return of 6.75%, the trigger for “13th checks” should be extraordinary returns … say 40% in a year or so.

And no, I’m not joking.

If you don’t want variability in your payouts, then you should have triggers that are far more extreme than merely exceeding the “expected” amount.

Checks have gone out every year since 1984 except for 2003, 2009 and 2012.

What does it take not to issue a 13th check? There was a huge loss in FY2009, and a minor loss in FY2008. Yes, there was a low, positive return in FY2012, but they didn’t get a check…

ANDTHEREWAS A SIMILARLYLOWRETURNFOR FY2016!

And yet they got a 13th check that year.

Do you understand how the supposedly well-funded Detroit pensions with their 13th checks got “whacked”? (and they weren’t whacked… much.)

And I don’t even know what’s going on here:

According to a 2004 review by the city’s Pension Reform Committee, the 13th check policy was awarding bonuses that were higher than some recipients’ benefits over the course of an entire year. City officials scrambled to place a cap on how much each person could receive, and the change resulted in a legal battle and subsequent settlement of nearly $10 million.

I really want to see what benefit formula they’re using.

Because really?

Anything less than 100% funded should result in no 13th checks.

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meep2019-01-16T22:18:29Z2019-01-16T22:18:29ZLos Angeles Teacher Strike: Pensions are a Drivertag:stump.marypat.org,2019-01-16:38b055a9c25740dc7e39822b07585fe0/1b12ee37e1492e1b816afd87e48b84e8
I will get to the pensions-specific aspect in a moment.

The head of the Los Angeles teachers union said he hoped to resume talks “very soon” as a strike that has interrupted classes for some 492,000 students in the second-largest U.S. public school system ticked into a third day on Wednesday.

More than 30,000 educators have walked off the job demanding higher pay, smaller classes and more staff, requests that the county’s independent school district has described as unaffordable. The two sides have not held formal talks since the strike began on Monday.

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti and California Governor Gavin Newsom, both Democrats, have urged the two sides to return to the bargaining table. The school system does not answer to either of the two executives.

….

Beutner said the district had offered staff increases that would cost $130 million a year – more than county officials have said is available – while the union’s demands would cost $800 million.

Beutner on Tuesday offered to accompany teachers in lobbying state lawmakers to increase education funding.

The union wants a 6.5 percent pay raise. LAUSD teacher pay currently averages $75,000, according to state figures. The district has offered a 6 percent hike with back pay.

I wanted to highlight the “both Democrats” part. This is not just a California thing — you will also be seeing such phrases in Illinois and New Jersey this year… and for the same reason. Because Democrats run everything in those states, in terms of the legislatures and governorship. And all three states have some serious financial weaknesses.

Mainly due to pensions… but even if the pension issue weren’t there, they still tend to overpromise/overextend for their tax base.

SUPERINTENDENTSPEAKS

Here is what the superintendent of the LA Schools wrote for the Wall Street Journal:

Here’s a problem that a high-school economics teacher in Los Angeles would relish under different circumstances: Farmer Bob has been growing potatoes for decades, but now the market is shifting, and Bob’s $8 billion business is losing nearly $500 million a year. Bob agreed years ago to provide his workers generous health-care and pension benefits in exchange for paying them lower wages. Bob’s employees have gone on strike, demanding more money and additional workers.

How does Bob’s farm stay in business?

As superintendent of Los Angeles Unified School District, I face the same question. Staggering pensions and health-care costs are battering public schools in California like a spring blizzard, while competition is drawing away students and money. Except that storms pass and this financial crisis isn’t going away anytime soon.

….
The teachers union’s demands would cost an additional $3 billion during that same three-year span. That would end one way: bankruptcy and a state takeover of the school district, which would be catastrophic to everyone involved. The 2012 takeover of the neighboring Inglewood Unified School District resulted in substantial layoffs and frozen wages.
….
In our most recent proposal, we offered to give teachers a 6% raise and to add 1,300 educators. This is more than the independent, state-appointed fact finder recommended in his December 2018 report.

To get the money to boost wages further and hire more teachers, we need to end the strike and unite to increase funding for our public schools.

—-

Mr. Beutner is superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District.

So, the superintendent is also asking for more money for LA Schools. But he can’t exactly control that. He can ask for that. But…

The 33,000-strong L.A. teachers’ union went on strike Monday as the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) slouches toward insolvency due to unaffordable labor contracts. Despite a putative $1.8 billion reserve, the district is spending about $500 million more each year than its annual revenues and will be broke within two years, which could prompt a state takeover and bankruptcy.

Los Angeles teachers earn on average about $75,000 per year — about $6,000 less than the statewide average — though compensation including health and retirement benefits exceeds $110,000. One problem is the region’s high housing costs make it harder to retain teachers while more and more money is diverted to benefits and pensions.

….
Nearly all California school districts are also being squeezed by rising pension payments that the state Legislature has mandated to shore up the California State Teachers’ Retirement System (Calstrs). School district pension costs have more than doubled since 2014.

Recall that in 2012 public unions and Democrats championed a tax referendum to soak the wealthy — putatively to raise money for schools. Voters in 2016 extended the tax hike through 2030. Well, state K-12 spending has increased 70% since 2012, yet pensions have swallowed the tax windfall.

Strike or no strike, after a deal is ultimately reached on a contract for Los Angeles teachers, the school district will still be on a collision course with deficit spending because of pensions and other financial obligations.

School systems across California are experiencing burdensome payments to the state pension fund while struggling to improve schools.

The problem is especially acute for districts like Los Angeles Unified that will see a financial hit in part because of steadily declining enrollment.

As fewer students enroll, public schools get less in per-pupil funding from the state, said Helen Cregger, an analyst and vice president at the financial services company Moody’s.

….
The LA district’s contributions to the state’s two large pension plans — California State Teachers’ Retirement System and the California Public Employees’ Retirement System — amounted to about 5.5 percent of the budget in the 2014-15 school year. By last year, that number had climbed to nearly 8 percent, according to an Associated Press analysis.

FYI journalists needing some help with regards to this 2.5 percentage point increase: this represents a 45% budgetary increase (assuming that the overall budget didn’t increase… so if it increased, the percentage increase is even larger)

David Crane, president of the advocacy group Govern for California, said there’s nothing an individual school district can do about its rising pension costs. He said state aid — like a plan that new Gov. Gavin Newsom introduced Thursday in his budget proposal — could reduce the burden for districts, though.

State aid. Hmmm. Let’s see what Gavin Newsom mentioned.

Newsom, a Democrat, wants to make a $3 billion one-time payment to California’s teacher pension fund on behalf of schools to help districts that are seeing more of their budgets eaten up by pension obligations.

Okay, is that a real payment or a pension obligation bond “payment”?

Also: what exactly is the Calstrs hole?

I’ll get that back to a bit in a moment, but I wanted to grab this from the WaPo piece:

Since 2014, California schools have been required to contribute an increasing amount of money to secure the pensions of current teachers and to pay down unfunded liabilities for retirees.

In 2013, schools put in 8.25 percent of a teacher’s earnings to help fund pensions. That rate will more than double to 19 percent by 2020.

Ah, a journalist who knows to compare the rates appropriately.

So, again, assuming the payroll base doesn’t increase (ha ha), the pension contributions would have to increase 130% from the 2013 rate.

THESTATE OF CALSTRS

I’ve written about Calstrs before, but mainly about the divestment inanity all the Californians (and New Yorkers and…) are caught up in.

‘Lawmakers in June [2006] rejected Crane’s appointment to the teacher retirement board by Schwarzenegger, after he had served almost a year. State Senate leader Don Perata (D-Oakland) said the job of trustees is “only to protect members’ benefits” — not to worry about the long-term effects of the benefits on the state budget.’

Okaaaaaay, then.

That was ten years ago. How’s the funded ratio doing now, guys?

In 2006, the plan was 87% funded.

In 2015, it was 69% funded.

A drop of almost 20 percentage points.

So, I wrote that bit a few years back. I also noted the gross underfunding pattern Calstrs had.

As anyone who’s ever stepped into a “gentlemen’s club” knows, lap dances can get pretty pricey. But owners of an Illinois strip joint believe the nearly $2 million tax bill they received for lap dance services provided is a bit much.

Court records show that proprietors of Polekatz Gentlemen’s Club, a strip club in Bridgeview, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago, are suing Cook County, alleging its revenue department is illegally demanding $1.7 million for lap dances under its “amusement tax.” That figure includes interest and penalties, according to The Cook County Record.

…..
The Land of Lincoln has been perhaps the nation’s boldest pioneer on the amusement tax front. While Chicago’s 2015 ruling, which expanded the amusement tax to cover streaming services such as Netflix and Hulu (and has since landed on Playstation users), has captured most of the national headlines, local governments such as Cook County and the city of Bloomington have also found ways to tax fun.
…..
Unlike Cook County’s previous amusement tax, strip clubs do not appear to be unfairly or unlawfully targeted. Polekatz, located about a dozen miles southwest of the Chicago Loop, is simply one of hundreds of Cook County businesses designated an “amusement operator;” therefore, the club is unlikely to receive legal protection on free expression grounds.
…..
To most people, the idea of taxing lap dances sounds as absurd as courts deciding if stripping is a form of artistic expression, as one New York strip club argued in 2012 in the hopes of getting a tax exemption. (In the end, after several years of litigation, a New York judge concluded that pole dancing is art; lap dances are not.)

Well. I am no art expert…..

Okay, anyway, it sounds like Polekatz is objecting simply to the total amount, not that they’re being taxed.

The Democrats are the Party of the Rich. They were swept into the House majority by a revolt of the elites. This party of Orange County, Westchester County, and Chicago’s North Shore is playing the part, wasting no time pushing policies to hand special tax breaks to their upper-middle-class constituents.

Consider Rep. Nita Lowey, D-N.Y. As the chairwoman of the Appropriations Committee, former chairwoman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and in the top 10 in seniority among Democrats, Lowey is among the most powerful members of Congress.

She has introduced two bills so far. One is the appropriations measure to reopen the government. The other is a major tax cut for the rich.

That tax cut is getting rid of the SALT cap.

Look, with the increase in the standard deduction, as well as cuts in marginal rates, you have had to have been taking ginormous deductions compared to one’s income for the TCJA to end up as a tax increase.

The “worst” that happens to most high income people (like me) is that our taxes didn’t really get cut with the TCJA… but they also didn’t go up.

Lowey’s district, for instance, has a median income of $96,000 and income tax rates that get as high as 8.82 percent. Throw on the astronomical property taxes in those New York City suburbs, and you can see why Lowey is big on maximizing this tax break for the wealthy.

The Democrats wouldn’t have taken over the House without its pickups in wealthy and high-tax districts. The ten states with the highest state and local taxes as a percentage of income accounted for 15 Democratic pickups (notably California, New York, New Jersey, and Minnesota). Throw in the Democratic flips in very wealthy suburban districts in Illinois and Virginia, and you realize the Democrats owe their majority to folks who have benefited the most from this tax break for the rich.

To be sure, there are high income folks not paying very high state or local taxes, but they’re in evil places like Florida and Texas. Soak those rich people, who refuse to vote for Democrats! (to be fair, I think a lot of the very high income folks in Texas do vote for Dems.)

I have a compromise position: just completely ignore state and local taxes for purpose federal income tax (aka: SALT cap at 0 — which would just involve removing anything involving state/local taxes from the filing. Simplifies things!)

By removing such deductions, Congress can drop marginal rates even further, and be revenue neutral!

Why should the federal government tax policy have anything to do with local tax policy? Increases in state/local taxes shouldn’t lead to reduced federal revenue!

In Chicagoland’s poorest suburb, just three miles from the Indiana border, property owners have discovered the most effective strategy yet for avoiding Illinois’ highest-in-the-nation property taxes.

Stop paying.

Facing astronomical bills on real estate that’s now worthless at best, Ford Heights home and business owners have literally nothing to lose by ignoring them.

Nearly 1,000 Ford Heights property tax bills totaling $2.3 million weren’t paid last year, according to an analysis of Cook County Treasurer records by South Cook News. That’s in a village of just 2,763 people, 987 households and 729 residential properties.

That’s… that’s an impressive tax revolt.

The 20 most expensive properties in Ford Heights in 2017 amounted to $6.6 million in alleged, collective property value and $1.07 million in property taxes due, according to Cook County.

An analysis by South Cook News found that 13 of those 20 bills have not been paid, totaling $737,630 of the $1.07 million.

….
They include Ford Heights’ top billed property, GMI Recycling Services at 1703 Cottage Grove Ave. The county values the property at $403,356; its tax bill last year was $192,271, or 48 percent of its alleged market value.

The McCullough Funeral Home at 1619 E. Lincoln Highway, next to Illinois Route 394, is delinquent on its $72,489 bill. Its effective rate is 28.5 percent on the property, valued at $253,932.

Two of Ford Heights three liquor stores are delinquent on their property taxes, including Food & Liquor on Lincoln (bill: $54,658) and BJ Foods & Liquor ($25,378). A New Way Food & Liquor ($30,632) is current; it was the scene of a 2009 fight between a village trustee, the liquor store’s clerk and Ford Heights police in 2009. The clerk had refused to sell the trustee more alcohol.

At some point people are going to notice that Obama also promised a green new deal style notion (and so did Al Gore). At some point people will notice top Democrats also promised to raise taxes on the wealthy and take on Wall Street. You can't avoid your past.

Josh, you are again claiming higher business and energy taxes under Labor. One shred of evidence to back this claim? One? And you’ve again forgotten to mention Labor’s tax cuts for the ten million Australians earning less than $125,000. https://t.co/VeVZnQmc01

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meep2019-01-13T17:33:34Z2019-01-13T17:33:34ZA Year of Dickens: Starting with Pickwick Paperstag:stump.marypat.org,2019-01-10:38b055a9c25740dc7e39822b07585fe0/d074a1de753dad0e8b0da07015e46dd3
Charles Dickens didn’t start writing with Pickwick Papers — his first published pieces were short “sketches” that ran in newspapers and other periodicals, and then compiled in Sketches by Boz. While I mainly focus on Dickens’s novels, Dickens would continue to write these short pieces throughout his career, and even used some short stories within Pickwick Papers itself.

The Pickwick Papers was his first novel, loosely defined, because it doesn’t really have much of a plot. What it has is a bunch of stuff, a lot of life, and a lot of laughter. I will talk about the characters later, but the novel is the only pure comedy of Dickens’s novels (though Martin Chuzzlewit comes a wee bit close… the murders in that book kind of remove the “pure comedy” aspect.) There are some minor dark spots at the end, when Mr. Pickwick is in debtor’s prison, but it’s not much.

It was a huge success during its time, and I think that lightness helped propel its popularity. I don’t fully agree with Sarah Hoyt about the need for darkness for people to take a book seriously (though I do agree with her that books can be too dark), and this novel is definitely a light touch. And there is a reason this book isn’t taught much except to the hard-core scholars. But then, neither is Martin Chuzzlewit nor Barnaby Rudge, and they’re a bit more serious.

Nothing terribly serious occurs throughout the book. Mr. Pickwick ends up in the debtor’s prison after a comical misunderstanding, a somewhat more serious civil trial, and then Mr. Pickwick’s moral indignation at the legal result and his refusal to pay damages. He backs down from this stance ultimately, because other people’s well-being is more important to him than his pride. Separately, Pickwick shows Christian forgiveness to other people who did him wrong and who have fallen on evil times themselves (though completely expected given their behavior).

I will talk about the “villains” of Pickwick next week.

AUDIOBOOKVERSIONWITHSIMONPREBBLE

The audiobook version of Pickwick Papers I’m listening to is narrated by Simon Prebble. I’ve listened to several books narrated by Prebble, and he’s been uniformly fabulous. I highly recommend Arguably as well.

The great thing about Pickwick, and pretty much all Dickens novels, is that there are so many different types of characters represented, in terms of class, age, and personality. It takes an excellent narrator to place each character properly.